I am no longer a stock broker, but I am still part of the financial world as a professional tax preparer. Since this is my busy season and the Lord has been blessing me with an unusually large group of new clients (with complicated tax situations) early in the season, I am relying on two guest contributors to flesh out my postings. But I will still be the one who ties them together.

Having been a stock broker for 20 years, I heard many of the stories and sayings of Wall Street. One of those stories is about a man who had recently attained considerable wealth. He went to Wall Street to meet with the most prestigious financial planners to choose which one would manage his wealth. At one of these meetings, held high above the city’s financial district, the planner brought the wealthy man to one of the large windows in the conference room overlooking the river. Thinking it would impress his prospective client, he made a grand gesture towards certain boats on the water’s edge and said, “Those are the brokers’ yachts!”

The wealthy man had a different idea of what was important. “Where are the investors’ yachts?” he wanted to know.

The two stories I am sharing look at two major ways that transgender people are attacked in the United States (and in many parts of the world). The first talks about physical attacks of violence that injure, disfigure and sometimes murder the victim. The hateful perpetrators of this violence use fists, blunt objects, knives, guns, and a variety of other methods to carry out their attacks.

The second story talks about legislative acts of violence that makes it easier for perpetrators of physical violence to target transgender people. They might even encourage them. These laws are proposed (and now passed in South Dakota) in the name of Christian morality and defense of straw man victims. Sadly, this puts Christianity in a bad light, putting a selfish interest (prejudice) ahead of concern for the wellbeing of innocent people who are put into clear and present danger on a regular and ongoing basis.

Both stories from a lofty perspective point out some of the victims of violence against transgender people. Like the prospective client in our Wall Street tale, we wonder, where are the victims of violence done by transgender people? Indeed, where are victims of violence done by people pretending to be transgender?

Summary of the first story: For Jacie Leopold, a trans woman in the latter stages of physical transition, the night of her company’s Christmas party in 2014 was the night that the lights went out in Arkansas. Since then, a phalanx of backwoods Southern judges, lawyers and police officers have denied her justice. She has no job and no car, but the medical bills don’t go away.

With thinly veiled irony, Charlize Veritas, a trans woman and the author of the following Huff Post piece, comments that Jacie is “very lucky”. This sort of thing still happens all too frequently, and sometimes it leads to the victim’s death. Even so, there is a loud chorus of voices blaming the victim.

Summary of the second story: Before I talk about the story, I will say a few words about the author. Among Brynn Tannehill’s many accomplishments, she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and then earned a master’s degree in operations research from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology; served her country as a Naval Officer for nearly 17 years, much of that time as a pilot, flying over 450 combat missions and over 700 hours on non-combat missions; has continued to serve her country as a senior defense analyst and technical scientist for private firms; came out as a trans woman; writes brilliant articles highlighting transgender issues in our society of who we are and what we face.

The title of her article plays on Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous quote that succinctly describes how failure to defend others from unfair attack led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to absolute power in Nazi Germany where no German citizen could stand against him and be safe. Brynn brings to light a systematic plan advanced by the Family Research Council that targets members of the transgender community to make us less than second class citizens. As a backlash against the recent advances that help us to live as freely as any other citizen enjoys, it would eventually lead to such a hostile environment that would either force us into the dark underbelly of society or keep us cowering in the closet.

(Brynn knows something about music, too. Just as I alluded to Vicki Lawrence’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”, she quotes a phrase from Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”.)

Brynn also gives special attention to the targeting of transgender children at the forefront of this attack strategy. If there is any group that highlights the innocence of transgender identity, it is these precious and courageous children who are daring to step out at a time of life when most of us feared to tread. The FRC and others who support this plan know that these children are the most vulnerable part of the transgender community. If they can effectively drive this generation of transgender children back underground, who knows how many generations it will be before the transgender community can once again emerge from the Dark Ages.

I need not rewrite Brynn’s article for her. She does a magnificent job on her own:

As a Christian, I am deeply saddened by the central role played by the Family Research Council in attacking the transgender community. I can remember many articles of sound advice from their organization, mostly from the pen of Dr. James Dobson. (I make no claims as to whether it would be different if Dobson were still at the helm of this ministry.) It’s almost like another close Christian friend turned against me, as some did when I came out.

But there is also good news tonight. I have one more link to share. But rather than a story (I said that there were only two), this is a report about a research study out of the University of Washington that was released Friday (2/26). The study suggests that parental support is a major factor in the success of a child’s transition. In other words, it is not the gender issue that leads to problems; it is the lack of support.

The researchers honestly admit that more studies are needed to test for other reasons for the findings. But while their methodology was somewhat different, the study’s finding are consistent with an Ontario study of a few years ago with a much larger data base of trans youth age 16-24. I referred to this study in my blog post of 1/6/16, “A Dream Deferred … or Worse”.

As these findings mount, they are poking huge holes in the failed arguments of doctors like Paul McHugh who base their beliefs on their own prejudices, biased studies of their own commission and disingenuous reporting of other studies which arrived at vastly different conclusions (while failing to acknowledge those conclusions). Hopefully these accurate studies are coffin nails that can finally put these failed beliefs to rest and bury them where they belong.

Meanwhile, those Christians (and others who take their authority from scripture) who lie about transgender people would do well to consider the Old Testament penalty for falsely accusing someone. It is the negative counterpart to the New Testament teaching that with the measure by which you forgive, so shall you be forgiven.

If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. – Deuteronomy 19:16-19

I am female. That makes me physically vulnerable. Sometimes, I use the ladies room in public places. It is a personal issue for me.

As a woman in the world, I need to be aware of my surroundings. That means where I park my car, where I walk late at night and so on. It has nothing to do with being transgender. Having just passed year two of real life experience, the evidence is that very few people have read me. Certainly they would not from a distance. This is what friends tell me and this is what the reactions of strangers (or lack thereof) tell me. So while I am aware of the excessive violence against transgender members of society, my perceived vulnerability is related to being female.

Some time ago, I had the opportunity to comment on some legislation that would give the right of people to (in laymen’s terms) use bathroom facilities based on the way they are presenting themselves at the time. If they are dressed female, they would have the right to use female restrooms.

My initial reaction is that the legislation was too broad. Like many women, I would not want to encounter someone the size of an NFL defensive lineman in a women’s bathroom at the mall, simply because that person decided to wear a dress and a wig and maybe smeared on some makeup. My concern was not about a transgender person, regardless of size. Rather it was about someone looking for a loophole in the law to prey on women in a place where we need to have an expectation of safety and privacy.

My confession is that I now realize that I was wrong to not comment favorably on the legislation. There are a number of reasons. From a legal standpoint, the situation I am concerned about is covered by statues that make it illegal for a person to use disguises or impersonation to facilitate the commission of a crime or the express purpose of committing a crime. That covers assault, bank robbery, impersonating a police officer and pulling over a motorist on the highway and so on. If we need to add a clause to transgender rights legislation that confirms that nothing in that new law will nullify the existing laws about committing a crime while in disguise, then do it. Don’t throw out the law on that basis.

But there is a more basic reason. It has to do with the reality of who needs to be protected.

Once again we have reached the time of year when we remember those members of the transgender community who were murdered in the past year. Once again we will read the names of hundreds of those victims of hatred. Once again we will be reminded that merely living life as we know ourselves to be, based on how we were born, we are thousands of times more likely to end our life at the brutal hands of another human. Once again we will read and hear the causes: blunt force trauma to the head; multiple stab wounds; stoning; multiple gunshot wounds; dismemberment; suffocation; burning; strangulation; hanging; thrown from a vehicle and run over; pushed off a moving train; drowned. We are told about the indignities that sometimes are added to these murders: rape, eyes removed, victims bound and gagged, victims dumped like trash. We read the locations. Yes many occur in foreign countries: Brazil, India, the Philippines, England and Turkey to name a few. But this epidemic brutality has not departed from the United States. Since our last TDOR memorial, we have notice of murders in Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, and Los Angeles as well as some smaller municipalities.

Nor does murder against members of the transgender community respect an age limit. The oldest victim was 55 years old; the youngest eight. The child’s father was the murderer. The reason: the child refused to get a haircut, liked women’s clothing and dancing.

Now tell me, how many murders were committed in the past year by members of the transgender community against people because they were perceived to be cisgender? How many murders were committed in the past year by men disguised as women who preyed on women in public restrooms or similar places provided for women? Could it happen? Of course it could. Does it happen? Send me the report from a legitimate news source and I will not deny it. Would the number, if any, approach the number of transgender people murdered over the same time period? Not even close.

So who is it that needs protection again? With all the fear mongering and hand wringing about what someone might do or who might be going into the same bathroom at school as your daughter, there are hundreds of people who are actually being killed and even desecrated. The outcry is against something theoretical that has not caused problems when put into practice in various locations. But even worse, the outcry is against laws that are designed to attempt to protect people who actually are getting murdered and assaulted.

People are sensitive about what happens to children. Let’s take a closer look at the arguments about schools.

First of all, who do your daughters need to fear? Are there no girl bullies in your school? Consider yourself fortunate. Some schools even have girl gangs. Not only are they using the same bathrooms as your daughter, they are far more likely to be predatory than a male to female transgender child.

In fact, the transgender child is more likely to be the recipient of violence than the inflictor (as we also see in the adult world). What you are demanding is that someone else’s daughter (as her parents see her), a transgender girl, use a boy’s bathroom dressed as a girl with all her male classmates knowing that she acts like a girl. Don’t you see how cruel that is? Don’t you see how much more dangerous that is to this child than the hypothetical fear that you are projecting on this situation. And I say hypothetical because in school districts were this has been tried (for example in Los Angeles for 10 years) no problems of the kind you are claiming are occurring. But we certainly know many cases of transgender children being bullied and attacked.

Furthermore, when you say is that you don’t want a male to female transgender child in the bathroom with your daughter, you are implying (whether you know it or not) that it is acceptable to you for a female to male child to be in that bathroom with her. Regardless of the body with which this child was born, he now thinks of himself as male, has the attitudes of a male, may be working out his body as a male. In other words, if your daughter is in middle or high school, you are perfectly fine with your daughter being in the bathroom with someone who essentially is a teenage guy. The only thing he can’t do is get your daughter pregnant. But he could certainly molest her, if that is what is on his mind.

Now please understand here that I am not saying that this is what female to male transsexuals do or are inclined to do. The point that I just made is that this is the consequence of the absurd reasoning of those who are hateful and fear-mongering. Part of this is because the protection of daughters is a bigger flash point than the protection of sons. Another part is that there is much more attention in society given to male to female than female to male. When the “average” cisgender person thinks at all about the topic of transgender, my experience is that male to female is far more likely to come to mind. If not for Chaz Bono, many cisgender people might not even know that the transgender door swings both ways. Perhaps some people still aren’t aware of that fact.

There are some Christian parents who object to their children being exposed to this “lifestyle”. I respect their right to their opinion. But let me point out two things. First, do they send their children to schools were all the students are Christian? If they are going to public school, the answer is almost always “no”. Therefore, they are exposing their children to others who might tell them about the beliefs of another religion, or even the belief that God doesn’t exist. Isn’t that a far riskier exposure that might turn their children away from what they are teaching them? In comparison, transgender is one tiny issue that is still a rare phenomenon in society.

And that is the second point. It is a phenomenon, not a lifestyle. Children at age young ages (often pre-school) are not choosing a lifestyle. They are simply declaring who they are. Those who know truly know. No matter how much sand some people try to shovel against the tide, the growing evidence is that this is a birth condition. Indeed, this is the way God made them (and me) and that is what you are arguing against.

Now, move ahead to the adult years. While the exposure to an objectionable lifestyle argument generally disappears at this time, all the other arguments against transgender rights to use a bathroom commensurate with one’s presentation remain. But the counter arguments are also the same and even stronger. For someone presenting as a woman to use a men’s public bathroom is even more dangerous than in school. The men are stronger and the security is laxer. And the transman who would be required to use the woman’s bathroom is also now likely to be much stronger. As an adult, he is far more likely to be on testosterone, not just estrogen blockers. He is building solid muscle, especially if he is working out. And many do work out.

Finally, let me address what appears to be a moderate point of view. I have spoken to people who are supportive of me, but they have a problem with some legislation being too extreme. They will support legislation that allows people who can show that they have been diagnosed as transgender to use the bathrooms of their target gender. But they draw the line at a man being allowed to use a woman’s bathroom just because “he feels like a woman that day” (as some would make the argument).

This is pretty much where we came in. Basically, we are addressing the fear that someone will use this as a loophole to prey on women. But as we have seen, this is a red herring. There are other laws that cover this situation.

But while restricting the rights to those who have been diagnosed might sound like a reasonable compromise, there are still many transgendered people who would be exposed to unnecessary danger over such a compromise. First of all, it does not protect the male to female transsexual who has not yet been diagnosed and in some cases those who have requested a delay in that diagnosis because of family, job or insurance issues.

Second, it does not take into consideration the fact that there are some transgender people who are not transsexual in the sense that those terms have been used in recent years. They cross dress. They enjoy expressing their feminine side on a regular and ongoing basis. But they still see themselves as belonging to their assigned gender. If their birth certificate states that they are male, they see themselves as male. But they go to galas, parties, events, clubs, support and social group meetings in female mode. And whether they are at a public hotel or restaurant or at a rest stop, they may have the need to use the bathroom facilities. They would face the same dangers as a diagnosed transsexual if they were to use the men’s bathroom. The legislation needs to be crafted so that they are also protected. Here again, they are in far greater danger in a men’s bathroom than the other women in the women’s bathroom are from the presence of that transgender woman.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. – Matthew 5:9